Utah and CA are still technically mostly in drought conditions, but things are looking much better for this year, and with the prolonged cooler than normal temps, and high snowfall, the chances of a late season rapid melt leading to local flooding are increasing.

The record season snowfall at Alta is 847". They are currently at 639", so that record seems safe, but Alta could well get over 700". BTW, 639" is a little over 50 feet.

Park City Mountain ski area just announced that they are moving their closing date two weeks later, to April 23.

Two reservoirs near I-80, Echo (Coalville) and Rockport (Wanship) started releasing water today. Big Cottonwood Creek was all muddy a few days ago, so they are apparently releasing water up in Big Cottonwood Canyon as well.

Lake Oroville is the second largest reservoir in California, and is the one shown in the the photos of "look how bleeping low this lake is" the last several years.

Take a look at how fast the lake level is coming up right now:
https://oroville.lakesonline.com/Level/

Granted, the last 60 feet of lake level represents a lot more water than the first 60 feet, but still, it is looking like the lake will probably overfill, and it is 3 million acre feet and change. That is not chump change.

West Yellowstone has 54" on the ground, and with the plow ridges from street plowing added on top of that, the snow piles in town should be pretty impressive.

I haven't had the nerve to try to drive up to the SLC ski resorts. Traffic looks awful, and parking is no doubt worse. There are impressive avalanches being shown on local news shows. Both Cottonwood canyons have been closing often for avalanche control.

From what I've heard, the best guess is that there would need to be five more winters like this last one in a row for the drought to effectively end. I'm also very much interested in how much water and how high the Colorado River gets from this winter's snowfall. I can tell you now that the big rains and cold temperatures appear to be over for central and southern Arizona for at least the next two weeks.

Five years is the figure I've been hearing too. I suspect that 3 or 4 years of exceptional snowfall and rain like this year would do it. It will be a while before we know if this year is a one-off, or the reversal of the drought. I'm expecting that this year is a one-off, but then the world is a complicated place, and we don't know for sure what is going to happen.

Most of our recent Utah storms were coming from lows passing through AZ, but now they are coming down from the Pacific NW, so AZ is out of luck for a while at least.

It appears that those who support humanity’s dominance over the earth must now give thanks to Mormonism’s successful campaign to bring moisture to those who have prayed for it, thus making Mother Earth their bitch.

One hopes that mormons remember to start cranking their prayer wheels next Fall . . .

Our snowpack is at 200%. I think California will have plenty of water for everything this year.

I hope the Great Salt Lake gets some water along with the Colorado River lakes and California resovoirs. Droughts are not pleasant to endure.

Call me in two weeks...
And again in two years...
And tell me everything's normal